The present invention relates to a front body of a motor vehicle wherein two units are provided around a dash panel, which partitions a engine compartment from a passenger compartment, and a method of assembling a vehicle body.
Recently combining motor vehicle components into a unit has been trying in order to simplify the assembling operation and to decrease the number of working stations in an assembly line in manufacturing motor vehicles.
As disclosed in the Europe Patent Application Laying Open Gazette No. 81656, inserting a unit, which incorporates an instrument panel, an air conditioning system, a steering system, a part of a dash panel, a brake pedal, and a brake mutiplier system, etc., to inside the vehicle body through an opening of the side door of a vehicle body, and mounting the unit in a dash panel from the inside of the vehicle body was proposed.
The Japanese Patent Application Laying Open Gazette No. 59-206267 proposed another incorporated unit including a cowl panel and a dash panel mounted in the vehicle body from the upper side through an opening of a front windshield.
In the former example (Europe Patent Application Laying Open Gazette No. 81656), since a cowl panel is left in the vehicle body side, a windshield wiper system which is to be installed in the cowl panel cannot be incorporated in the unit and the operational efficiency of installation is not fully improved. Although a steering shaft of a steering system and a brake mutiplier system are located in the engine compartment side through the opening of a dash panel, the location of the brake multiplier system in the upper side of the steering shaft is inevitably determined so that the brake multipiler system does not interrupt the steering shaft since the steering shaft of the steering system is primarily placed.
In case that thus determined location of the brake multiplier system overlaps with the cowl panel in the vertical direction of the vehicle body, when the brake multiplier system and the cowl panel are inserted through an opening of the dash panel, the installation may be complicated since vertical movement of the unit is needed to prevent the brake multiplier system from interrupting the cowl panel. To avoid this, the locational relationship between the cowl panel and the brake multiplier system is restricted when designing the vehicle body.
On the other hand, in the latter example (Japanese Patent Application Laying Open Gazette No. 59-206267), since the unit is inserted from the upper side of the vehicle body through an opening of a front windshield, the side of an instrument panel is restricted by front pillars which constitute right and left side ends of an opening of the front windshield and accordingly, the side part of the instrument panel is cut compared with the usual case. Consequently, the structure of the connecting part between the side part and the vehicle body may be complicated. Moreover, even a cowl member to secure rigidity in the horizontal direction is included in the above unit side and the unit is mounted in the vehicle body, the cowl member is not welded to the vehicle body like a conventional embodiment. Therefore the supporting force for the shock load on a head-on collision is less than the conventional construction which does not combine vehicle components into a unit. Thus, the whole unit may move to the rear of the vehicle body.